Download or read book Legacies of the Sword written by Karl F. Friday and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 1997-07-01 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Western scholars and educators are generally far less familiar with the samurai in his original-and, ostensibly, primary-role as warrior and masters of arms than in his other functions as landowner, feudal lord, literature, or philosopher. Yet, any attempt to comprehend fully the samurai without considering his military abilities and training (bugei) is futile. With verve and wit, Karl Friday combines the results of nearly two decades of fieldwork and archival research to examine samurai martial culture from a broad perspective: as a historical phenomenon, as a worldview, and as a system of physical, spiritual, and moral education.

Download or read book written by 国際交流基金 and published by Tokyo, Japan : The Japan Foundation. This book was released on 1986 with total page 760 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A religious study of the Mount Haguro sect of Shegund An example of Japanese mountain religion written by Harry Byron EARHART and published by . This book was released on 1970 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Newsletter written by and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 670 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Defining Shugendo written by Andrea Castiglioni and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-11-12 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Defining Shugendo brings together leading international experts on Japanese mountain asceticism to discuss what has been an essential component of Japanese religions for more than a thousand years. Contributors explore how mountains have been abodes of deities, a resting place for the dead, sources of natural bounty and calamities, places of religious activities, and a vast repository of symbols. The book shows that many peoples have chosen them as sites for ascetic practices, claiming the potential to attain supernatural powers there. This book discusses the history of scholarship on Shugendo, the development process of mountain worship, and the religious and philosophical features of devotion at specific sacred mountains. Moreover, it reveals the rich material and visual culture associated with Shugendo, from statues and steles, to talismans and written oaths.

Download or read book Tengu written by Roald Knutsen and published by Global Oriental. This book was released on 2011-08-15 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fully illustrated volume, including an eight-page colour-plate section, is the first in-depth study in English to examine the warrior and shamanic characteristics and significance of tengu in the martial art culture (bugei) of Muromachi Japan (1336-1573). According to Roald Knutsen, who is widely known for his writings on the samurai tradition, prompting his life-long study of tengu – the part-human, part-animal creatures – was the early discovery that the tengu of the Muromachi period were interacting with the deadly serious bugei masters teaching the arts of war. Here were beings who did not conform to the comic, goblin-like creatures of common folklore and were not the creations of the Buddhist priests intent on demonizing that which they did not understand and could not control. As this study shows, the part-hidden tengu under review passed on and taught the clearest theory of tactics and strategy to bushi of the highest calibre, the absorption and mastery of which often decided if the warrior and his clan lived or were annihilated on the all-too-frequent killing grounds of the Muromachi age. Tengu will be widely welcomed in many contexts including studies relating to martial arts, religion and folklore, shamanism and mythology, and the social and military history of Japan.

Download or read book Shugendo written by Hitoshi Miyake and published by U of M Center for Japanese Studies. This book was released on 2007-01-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume of essays is the first comprehensive publication in English of the work of Miyake Hitoshi, a distinguished scholar of Shugendo (mountain asceticism) and one of the foremost researchers on Japanese folk religion. In Miyake's systematic methodological and theoretical approach, Shugendo is a classic example of Japanese folk religion, for it blends many traditions (shamanism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Shinto) into a distinctive Japanese religious worldview and is typical of Japanese religion generally. The first part of this book is devoted to Shugendo's history, organization, ritual, austerities, thought, and cosmology. Related subjects include exorcism and the exclusion of women. The second part of the book provides research and reflection on Japanese folk religion, including essays on the idea of nature, worldly benefits, new religions, death and rebirth, and the structure of folk religion.

Download or read book Folk Religion in Japan written by Ichiro Hori and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1974 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ichiro Hori's is the first book in Western literature to portray how Shinto, Buddhist, Confucian, and Taoist elements, as well as all manner of archaic magical beliefs and practices, are fused on the folk level. Folk religion, transmitted by the common people from generation to generation, has greatly conditioned the political, economic, and cultural development of Japan and continues to satisfy the emotional and religious needs of the people. Hori examines the organic relationship between the Japanese social structure—the family kinship system, village and community organizations—and folk religion. A glossary with Japanese characters is included in the index.

Download or read book Religion Power and the Rise of Shinto in Early Modern Japan written by Stefan Köck and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-04-08 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book sheds new light on the relationship between religion and state in early modern Japan, and demonstrates the growing awareness of Shinto in both the political and the intellectual elite of Tokugawa Japan, even though Buddhism remained the privileged means of stately religious control. The first part analyses how the Tokugawa government aimed to control the populace via Buddhism and at the same time submitted Buddhism to the sacralization of the Tokugawa dynasty. The second part focuses on the religious protests throughout the entire period, with chapters on the suppression of Christians, heterodox Buddhist sects, and unwanted folk practitioners. The third part tackles the question of why early Tokugawa Confucianism was particularly interested in “Shinto” as an alternative to Buddhism and what “Shinto” actually meant from a Confucian stance. The final part of the book explores attempts to curtail the institutional power of Buddhism by reforming Shinto shrines, an important step in the so called “Shintoization of shrines” including the development of a self-contained Shinto clergy.

Download or read book A Social History of the Ise Shrines written by Mark Teeuwen and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-02-09 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ise shrine complex is among Japan's most enduring national symbols, and A Social History of the Ise Shrines: Divine Capital is the first book to trace the history of the shrines from their beginnings in the seventh century until the present day. Ise enshrines the Sun Goddess Amaterasu, the imperial ancestress and the most prominent among kami deities, and has played a vital role in Japan's social, political and religious history. The most popular pilgrims' attraction in the land from the sixteenth century onwards, in 2013 the Ise complex once again captured the nation's attention as it underwent its periodic rebuilding, performed once every twenty years. Mark Teeuwen and John Breen demonstrate that the Ise Shrines underwent drastic re-inventions as a result of on-going contestation between different groups of people in different historical periods. They focus on the agents responsible for these re-inventions, the nature of the economic, political and ideological measures they took, and the specific techniques they deployed to ensure that Ise survived one crisis after another in the course of its long history. This book questions major assumptions about Ise, notably the idea that Ise has always been defined by its imperial connections, and that it has always been a site of Shinto. Written by leading authorities in the field of Shinto studies, this is the essential history of Japan's most significant sacred site.

Download or read book Buddhism and Iconoclasm in East Asia written by Fabio Rambelli and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2012-11-08 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of Buddhism and iconoclasm in East Asia as part of a general theory of religious destruction.

Download or read book Kukai written by Kūkai and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1972 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kukai, more commonly known by the honorific Kobo Daishi, was one of the great characters in the development of Janpanese culture. He was active in literature, engineering, calligraphy, and architecture and is represented in this work in terms of his major effort--the introduction of esoteric Buddhism from China, which resulted in the formation of the Shingou sect still active in Japan. Eight of his works are presented here.

Download or read book Shinto Nature and Ideology in Contemporary Japan written by Aike P. Rots and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-09-07 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shinto, Nature and Ideology in Contemporary Japan is the first systematic study of Shinto's environmental turn. The book traces the development in recent decades of the idea of Shinto as an 'ancient nature religion,' and a resource for overcoming environmental problems. The volume shows how these ideas gradually achieved popularity among scientists, priests, Shinto-related new religious movements and, eventually, the conservative shrine establishment. Aike P. Rots argues that central to this development is the notion of chinju no mori: the sacred groves surrounding many Shinto shrines. Although initially used to refer to remaining areas of primary or secondary forest, today the term has come to be extended to any sort of shrine land, signifying not only historical and ecological continuity but also abstract values such as community spirit, patriotism and traditional culture. The book shows how Shinto's environmental turn has also provided legitimacy internationally: influenced by the global discourse on religion and ecology, in recent years the Shinto establishment has actively engaged with international organizations devoted to the conservation of sacred sites. Shinto sacred forests thus carry significance locally as well as nationally and internationally, and figure prominently in attempts to reposition Shinto in the centre of public space.

Download or read book THE MANDALA OF THE MOUNTAIN written by 宮家準 and published by 慶應義塾大学出版会. This book was released on 2005-03 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 山岳を神霊、霊地として崇める修験道。修験道や日本の民俗宗教学の第一人者である宮家準氏の6つの論考を収載。「情報社会における日本の民俗宗教」から始まり、現代における民俗宗教のあり方と意義、修験道の歴史、修験道の修行や哲学思想など、日本の宗教学・宗教史、民俗学に興味のある海外の読者へ丁寧に解き明かし、解説する。臨場感あふれる図版を20点ほど掲載。巻末に欧文と日本語対応のインデックスを付す。

Download or read book History of Japanese Religion written by Masaharu Anesaki and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-01-15 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1930, History of Japanese Religion shows the interaction of various forces which manifested their vitality more in combination than in opposition. A saying ascribed to Prince Shotoku, the founder of Japanese civilization, compares the three religious and moral systems found in Japan to the root, the stem and branches, and the flowers and fruits of a tree. Shinto is the root embedded in the soil of the people's character and national traditions; Confucianism is seen in the stem and branches of legal institutions, ethical codes, and educational systems; Buddhism made the flowers of religious sentiment bloom and gave the fruits of spiritual life. These sentences outlines the scheme of the work and achievement that has long maintained a high reputation among students and scholars. This important and frequently cited book has been out of print for many decades and thus increasingly difficult to access. It is therefore a privilege as well as a pleasure to make it available once again in a complete and unabridged reprint of the original. This is a must read for students of religion, Japanese culture and Japanese history.

Download or read book The Weaving of Mantra written by Ryûichi Abé and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1999-06-28 with total page 620 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The great Buddhist priest Kûkai (774-835) is credited with the introduction and establishment of tantric -or esoteric -Buddhism in early ninth-century Japan. In Ryûichi Abé examines this important religious figure -neglected in modern academic literatu

Download or read book A Path into the Mountains written by Caleb Swift Carter and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shugendō has been an object of fascination among scholars and the general public, yet its historical development remains an enigma. This book offers a provocative reexamination of the social, economic, and spiritual terrain from which this mountain religious system arose. Caleb Carter traces Shugendō through the mountains of Togakushi (Nagano Prefecture), while situating it within the religious landscape of medieval and early modern Japan. His is the first major study to view Shugendō as a self-conscious religious system—something that was historically emergent but conceptually distinct from the prevailing Buddhist orders of medieval Japan. Beyond Shugendō, his work rethinks a range of issues in the history of Japanese religions, including exclusionary policies toward women, the formation of Shintō, and religion at the social and geographical margins of the Japanese archipelago. Carter takes a new tack in the study of religions by tracking three recurrent and intersecting elements—institution, ritual, and narrative. Examination of origin accounts, temple records, gazetteers, and iconography from Togakushi demonstrates how practitioners implemented storytelling, new rituals and festivals, and institutional measures to merge Shugendō with their mountain’s culture while establishing social legitimacy and economic security. Indicative of early modern trends, the case of Mount Togakushi reveals how Shugendō moved from a patchwork of regional communities into a translocal system of national scope, eventually becoming Japan’s signature mountain religion.